College instructors (including TT faculty, adjunct faculty, and graduate student TAs), do you notice a greater teaching load in the fall than spring, either more courses to teach, or more students in courses you teach?
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I will answer for a member of my family. They teach four CC courses as an adjunct both fall and spring terms, with very similar enrollment numbers.
Tenured professor here. My teaching load is the same both semesters (I’m contractually obligated to teach the same number of credit hours every semester, so this wouldn’t change). I do notice that I have more engagement and less ”melt” during the fall than during the spring. So more of my students who start the fall semester stick around to finish the fall semester than is the case in the spring.
I am a college professor and have similar loads in the spring and fall because of the courses I teach, but because we offer first year seminars in the fall, some of those courses tend to be smaller for the faculty who teach them. We do have more students off campus studying abroad (and a few graduating early) in the spring, so if anything, I think we have fewer students to serve then. I do notice that our departmental service load, even for “regular faculty” who are not chair, is higher in the spring though!
I teach year round, 3 semesters. I teach 3 classes each semester. Typically 2 are in person once a week 8 hour days. The 3rd one is online or hybrid.
I have some autonomy in deciding when to teach my classes. One 4 credit class which is huge has to be in the fall, it the others are kind of at my discretion, I will say I am the faculty expert in my area so I get a lot of deference. I have in the past put the heavier load in the fall. I teach 6 credits in the summer which could count toward my load but right now I am being paid as an overload.
Next year I switched one of my classes in the fall to online, I find it so hard to drag myself out when It is so cold and gross, I dress up ( dress for for the job you want) and live in Boston so winter is miserable. I hope it makes it more tolerable. I like having the winter break and the. Lighter spring to write like crazy. Years ago a senior professor insisted that spring was longer week wise with spring break and I am not sure it’s true but I have followed that.
Just to add tenured, I will say a graduate/ doctoral program, I don’t want to dox myself. It took years to carve out my schedule and it was very planned and deliberate for many years with senior professors trying to push me into other classes for their benefit so was a delicate dance I planned out, I did end up alienating some people but they retired.
Tenured professor here. The teaching load at my institution is 2 and 2, but with administrative roles (e.g., the department head), we typically get 1 or 2 course reduction per year. The actual number of students we’re teaching depends on the individual course, the nature/size of the program, etc., not on the particular semester.
@ucbalumnus I’m wondering why you asked? The responses you’re getting are pretty standard, so I’m wondering what made you think of the question.
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Main reason is that students who graduate a semester early or late (or otherwise leave college after a fall semester) cause spring enrollment to be lower than fall enrollment, and colleges try various things to get students off campus during fall (e.g. spring start admission, first semester abroad, Dartmouth D-plan).
Was wondering how that may become visible in teaching workloads for college instructors.
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My daughter taught at a state university (adjunct) on fall. She taught 3 courses, all very beginning history. For the spring, they wanted her to teach 5 courses including one DE at a high school that was about an hour away (honestly, she couldn’t afford to do that with the extra time commuting and gas) so she said she’d teach 3. About a week before the semester started she called the office to ask about her book order. Oh, they didn’t need her after all. Couldn’t even fill the 3 classes.
When she was a TA during grad school, i do think there were fewer students in her classes in the spring than in the fall
Full time instructors (whether TT/tenured/lecturers on contract) tend to have the same teaching load every semester, though it can vary with course releases/reassigned time for administrative duties, or obviously time on leave. When colleges have to cancel courses or reduce offered courses, it usually affects adjuncts the most, because they’re paid per course and not according to a contract for a specific number of credit hours. I guess I haven’t really kept track of whether my initial enrollments dip for spring semester, but I can definitely tell you that I have far more drop-off (students who withdraw or stay enrolled but go silent) in the spring than in the fall.
I am non tenure track faculty at an R2 and our work loads do not vary per semester. There are about 12 different courses/roles I am capable of teaching/doing so it can rotate.
Enrollment tends to drop off a bit in the spring at most schools for various reasons that are very school/population dependent so adjuncts tend to be needed less in the spring or some non-tenure track full-time instructors will still see the same number of courses because it’s in their contracts already but may be assigned 4 or 5 sections or the same gen ed course and get their more interesting seminar or upper division course dropped in the spring. My husband is a department chair and most of his faculty are on a 2:1 teaching load so the majority teach 2 in the fall and 1 in the spring due to enrollment needs.